Focus - Capacity Building with Health Care Professionals

Focus – Capacity Building with Health Care Professionals

After the onset or diagnosis of a disability, the farmer or rancher will likely come in contact with an array of health care professionals (e.g., physicians, occupational and/or physical therapists, social workers, rehabilitation nurses, discharge planners). These professionals often have limited knowledge of farm occupations and culture yet have considerable impact on treatment interventions that could return the farmer or rancher to work.

In 2003, the Oklahoma AgrAbility Project approached the National AgrAbility Project (NAP) with the idea that AgrAbility projects could expand their outreach and build service capacity by demonstrating to occupational (OT) and physical therapists (PT) that farmers with disabilities can return to farming. Carla Wilhite, a registered occupational therapist and Oklahoma AgrAbility project specialist, conducted a focus group of OTs and PTs who had experience working with farmers and offered her findings to NAP. The focus group identified skills, knowledge and interpersonal abilities believed essential in working with farmers. The group indicated that these areas were not part of the standard occupational or physical therapy curriculum and offered suggestions for additional coursework and training. Building on the focus group findings, NAP conducted surveys at both the American Occupational Therapy Association and American Physical Therapy Association annual meetings in 2005. The results supported the suggestions offered by the focus group.

In the 2004-2008 CSREES/USDA grant proposal, NAP included an educational priority to build service capacity with health care professionals. Initially, NAP has focused on training resources for the OTs and PTs because of their direct intervention role in rehabilitation and employment strategies. The goal is to build an infrastructure of educational resources and training materials that can be offered to a variety of healthcare professionals. In 2004, NAP also applied for and received a University of Wisconsin Extension program innovation grant that provided additional funds to videotape farmers and their assistive technologies and build an online course for Wisconsin occupational and physical therapists.

The NAP approach to building service capacity with OTs and PTs is being done on three levels: providing training materials to be used by State and Regional AgrAbility projects (SRAPs), an online continuing education course available on a national level, and resources and curriculum for university students at the pre-service level.

Initially six SRAPs expressed interest in participating in a pilot to build service capacity with OTs and PTs. As the curriculum and resources were being developed, additional SRAPs expressed an interest to become involved. Using 2005-2006 supplemental funds, NAP brought together fifteen SRAPs in July 2006 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma to pilot the training materials. Oklahoma AgrAbility provided invaluable information to the SRAPs about their experiences in conducting OT/PT training workshops. Additionally, Carla Wilhite has consulted with several SRAPs individually and will be a presenter during some of their future training workshops.

Following the Oklahoma training, each of these SRAPs committed their project to conducting a training workshop for OTs and PTs by the end of fiscal year 2006. Feedback from the SRAPs has been used to refine the materials used for face-to-face training and will be applied to the online curriculum and university pre-service resources as well.

The educational priority to reach out to the healthcare community is expected to be a win-win for farmers and ranchers, for health care providers and for the state projects. The initial feedback from Oklahoma training workshops and the NAP online course for OTs and PTs has been very positive and encouraging.

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In This Issue
Section 1: Client Story Section 2: Focus Section 3: Assistive Technology Notes	Section 4: State Project Feature Section 5: References Section 6: Contacts